


Both Sides of the Wall

by Sangerin



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-05
Updated: 2005-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangerin/pseuds/Sangerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone so gutted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Both Sides of the Wall

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers to 3.5

She’s never been this ill in her life. They did exercises on the North Sea in training and she was fine. It couldn’t be something she’d eaten: all she ate on the way out were those damned Pringles, pathetic excuse for crisps that they are. And it isn’t that she hasn’t thought of the possibility, it’s just that she doesn’t want to think about _that_ right now.

God.

She gags, and because she can’t get into the bathroom, she has to vomit in the sink. Damn it. She’s been on dry land for hours. Hours. Hours and hours of turning Danny’s words over and over in her head, of simmering and fuming and rehearsing speeches in her head. And now it’s all over – _over_ – and she’s vomiting in the kitchen sink because her flatmate has locked himself in the bloody bathroom.

They’ve been a team. They were a trio: She and Danny and Tom. And then it was just her and Danny. And then it got complicated.

And Danny has never, _never_ left her alone like this. Not since Helen died and he rescued her from that pit and that bastard and damn it to hell he’s in the bathroom and she has no idea what he’s going through right now. Even so she wants him out here, wants him with her, to tell her he didn’t mean it and that everything really is going to be okay. That they can go back to the way they were before Will, before the boat, before Tom and Adam and vaguely-worded declarations of love and everything that’s happened in the past few months.

She does get it. She _gets_ it, she swears she does. He’s in there beating himself up because he’s had to kill a man. Adam gave her the order first; she heard it and her stomach turned over. Everything was making her stomach turn, but that, that idea. She’d been secretly glad that it had to be Danny, in the end.

And yet, she didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone so gutted.

  
* * *

Eventually he stops gasping, stops choking on air and retching into the loo. He sits with his back against the tiled wall and feels the cold seep through his shirt. Adam’s words – all his words, from the order to kill to his little pep talk later – cycle through his head without stopping. He hates Adam. Hates Adam for not being Tom, for giving orders while he’s sane, rather than only when he’s completely losing it. Hates the fact that now he’s losing it, and he can hear Zoe through the door and knows she’s going through hell, too.

Why him? It shouldn’t have been him. It should have been Tom. Always out in front, always certain. They’d follow him anywhere, even into the jaws of hell. They’d proved it enough times. With that amount of charisma, with that extent of leadership – it should have been Tom.

It should have been Zoe. Even Adam knew, Harry knew, it should have been Zoe. She was senior, she was the responsible one. She was the engaged, mature, settling down with Will to have dozens of fat babies one. Until she got sick. And the hellish thought _had_ crossed his mind, but he wasn’t about to let it stay there. Because that was a thought that would fester.

It should have been Adam – he had the experience, he had the heart of stone. Did he care about anyone but that wife of his?

It should have been anyone else. Anyone but him.

Danny finds himself huddled over the loo again, his stomach contracting and bile rising, even though there’s nothing left within him to expel. There’s nothing left and he’s a cold dark shell, and he sees himself in a few years time and the thought terrifies him. He doesn’t want to be Tom, doesn’t want to be Adam. God knows he doesn’t want to end up like Harry or Tessa. He puts his head back and looks at the ceiling and murmurs, meaning every word, ‘Just kill me now.’

Zoe hurts too, he knows that. Saw the pain and has been seeing it ever since he slid those words into her like a sharp knife, twisting the blade. Danny’s hurting, too. Dying inside, just like her.

They’re all dead. Doing this job, they haven’t got a choice.


End file.
